IBM compliance are cracking down on customers who run distributed IBM software in virtual environments without monitoring the CPU usage of those environments. It is possible you could face a license compliance bill of millions of dollars.

When you purchase Distributed software from IBM such as IBM Information Server you obtain a license using the
IBM Processor Value Unit [PVU] licensing for Distributed Software. This is a calculation of the cost of your license based on the processing power of your processor. You need to pay for each processor and core for the server that the software is installed on.

This is easy to follow on a physical server.

Things get trickier when you install the IBM software into a virtualised environment as you fall under additional sub-capacity licensing requirements. IBM wants to make sure your virtual servers do not exceed your license. Since virtual environments can increase or decrease cores it is a requirement that you continually monitor your license compliance and provide a report to auditors when asked.

(Tivoli Asset Discovery for Distributed V7.2 (TADd) may be used in lieu of IBM License Metric Tool V7.2, Certain ILMT / TADd use exceptions may apply)

What we are finding is that many customers have not heard of ILMT – the IBM License Metric Tool – and they are failing IBM software audits because of this. If you are not running ILMT and you are running software in a virtual environment and you are subject to an IBM software audit you will be asked to pay for every physical processor core available to your virtualised environments. If your InfoSphere server has 8 virtual cores but is on a 2000 core physical server you will be asked to pay for 2000 physical cores.

You could face a multi-million dollar license fee just for using an unmonitored virtual environment. You could be asked to pay for processing cores you never used just for failing to monitor your compliance. You could be asked to back pay for licensing maintenance.

Sub-capacity licensing lets you license an eligible software product for less than the full capacity of your server or group of servers. It provides the licensing granularity needed to leverage various multi-core chip and virtualization technologies.

So if you are interested in virtualising your InfoSphere software make sure you understand the sub-capacity and ILMT requirements. A single ILMT instance can monitor a large number of environments across different IBM software brands.

"PVU licensing is a nightmare. I take on board what you said about Virtual Machine environments, but similar considerations appy to physical servers. If you add another CPU to your server or move from dual core to quad core, your license will no lobger be valid.
I worked for an organisation where the Development server was using a PVU license, and we ended up removing a quad core processor to ensure we stayed within PVU license restrictions.
As you say, IBM are getting much tighter with license monitoring. So it is beholden on the license holder to ensure that their configuration is compliant with their licenses. "